Friday, July 22, 2016

From the blog Musings of a Pertinacious Papist: "More pleas to the pope ..."Anonymous said...
She could have received the baptism of water after she died. St. Francis Xavier and the saints tell us that many people returned from the dead only to be baptised.

Bang, ace. You walked right into a straight right, just like I knew you would.

You are always arguing we can't believe thus and such because it was not seen but now you argue that what was not seen is what we must believe..

Lionel:

I do not reject the baptism of desire.For me it is invisible in real life if it exists.It is not an exception to the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus(EENS).For the Letter of the Holy Office 1949, accepted by the magisterium and the SSPX and sedevacantists, BOD is explicit and so it is an exception to EENs. My understanding of EENs is the same as the 16th century missionaries, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Francis Xavier etc.

I am not adding anything new.

I have to keep pointing out to the innovation which has come into the Church with the 1949 Letter to the Archbishop of Boston.Secondly whether St. Emerentiana received the baptism of water before or after she died or whether she is in Heaven without the baptism of water, she still is not an exception to the dogma EENS. Either way she is irrelevant to EENS. Since either way her condition would only be known to God.For there to be an exception to the dogma EENS there would have to be a physically known case in the present times, saved without the baptism of water in the Church. He or she would have to be a known example of salvation outside the Church.How can St.Emerentiana, in the past, be an exception to EENs in the present times (2016)?Simple reasoning.Elementary My Dear Watson!So you can speculate as much as you want about St Emerentiana but do not project her as an exception to EENS.

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HYPOCRITE!!!!!!!!!

The funny thing is you will not understand what I just wrote :)

Lionel: And possibly vice versa.The old programming on the baptism of desire being explicit is strong. So in your mind you have concrete cases of the baptism of desire being the norm. In my mind I see simply hypothetical cases. There was no known case of a catechuman who desired the baptism of water but died before he received it and was saved.No such case.

This 'famous catechumen' is a creation over the centuries by those who wanted to get rid of the dogma EENS. They have succeeded. Cardinals Ratzinger and Schonborn in the Catechism(1995) call EENS an 'aphorism'.They mention the baptism of desire and being saved in invincible ignorance in the Catechism as did Vatican Council II. It is as if they are explicit cases. So they become exceptions for the cardinals, to the old dogma on exclusive salvation in the Church.

Similarly over the years there has been a campaign to give the Eucharist to the divorced and the remarried.Amoris Laetitia has now topped the old campiagn which actually saw people on the streets of Rome a few decades back demanding the Eucharist be given to the divorced.

Similarly Cardinal Cushing and the Jesuits of Boston maintained the excommunication of Fr. Leonard Feeney and his expulsion from the Jesuit communities right through out Vatican Council II. In this way in Lumen Gentium 14, they could mention the 'famous unknown catechumen and in Lumen Gentium 16 mention being saved in invincble ignorance , as if they were explicit and exceptions to EENS.

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It is small wonder you are a feeneyite for the poor man went bonkers in his protestant judgment and he got so whacked that he had his slaves raising children comunally in Still River, Mass and those children were rarely allowed to see their parents. Can you say, CULT!!!!

Lionel: A lot of water has flowed in the river since you read those old reports in 1960's and 70's on Feeneyism.They assumed that the baptism of desire was explicit and so Fr. Feeney made a mistake.Now Catholics are asking themselves, "Heck! Where are these baptism of desire cases that we have been talking about for the last 70 years.What are their names and surnames and where do they live? I mean if they are exceptions they cannot only be in Heaven.They would also have to be on earth.So what are their addresses and telephone numbers?"

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Feeney also taught this: “To say that God would never permit anyone to be punished eternally unless he had incurred the guilt of voluntary sin is nothing short of Pelagianism... . If God cannot punish eternally a human being who has not incurred the guilt of voluntary sin, how then, for example can He punish eternally babies who die unbaptized?”

Punished eternally without incurring voluntary guilt. That is Calvinism, Ace, and that is YOUR God, not mine.Lionel: Please cite the exact text and source.It would be helpful.
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Here is Aquinas:

St. Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologica Part II. Question 66. Article 11

. . . a man receives the effect of Baptism by the power of the Holy Ghost, not only without Baptism of Water, but also without Baptism of Blood: forasmuch as his heart is moved by the Holy Ghost to believe in and love God and to repent of his sins: wherefore this is also called Baptism of Repentence."

Lionel: O.K.He is not saying it is explicit, seen in the flesh.He is not saying that it refers to someone we can know.I'm with Aquinas.

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"The other two Baptisms are included in the Baptism of Water, which derives its efficacy, both from Christ's Passion and from the Holy Ghost. Consequently for this reason the unity of Baptism is not destroyed." "The other two. however, are like the Baptism of Water, not, indeed, in the nature of sign, but in the baptismal effect. Consequently they are not Sacraments.”

Lionel: Consequently they are not Sacraments! They are not known. They are not visible. They are not repeatable like the baptism of water.So they cannot be physical exceptions to the dogma EENS which was affirmed by St. Thomas Aquinas in other text.He supports me! BOD is not a Sacrament and it is not objectively visible ! What more do you expect?!Aquinas is here contradicting the Baltimore Catechism(1891).Cardinal Gibbons placed the famous case of the unknown catechumen saved, in the Baptism Section of the Catechism.It is not a Sacrament says St. Thomas Aquinas and it is not known.The liberals(Masons) made the Baltimore Catechism as a precedent for rejecting the dogma EENS at Boston.

So the contemporary Church made an objective mistake in the Letter of the Holy Office 1949.It suggested that the baptism of desire was an exception to the Feeneyite interpretation of EENS.It was visible for them.It other words it was a possible Sacrament or had a sacramental effect or it was explicit to be an exceptiion to EENS. It could not be an exception since there are no baptism of desire cases in our reality.Aquinas does not state the contrary.

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You are outside the Church and so ironies abound when you shriek that those outside the church are going to Hell.

Lionel: I affirm EENS and I affirm invisible for us and known only to God baptism of desire and blood.It is same with being saved in invincible ignorance.So I am not rejecting EENs or BOD and I.I.

I affirm EENS according to the 16th century missionaries who did not mention any exceptions to the dogma.I accept the first part of the Letter of the Holy Office and reject the second part.Since it contradicts the first part.It infers there are physically known cases of the baptism of desire etc

Here is the first part:-

We are bound by divine and Catholic faith to believe all those things which are contained in the word of God, whether it be Scripture or Tradition, and are proposed by the Church to be believed as divinely revealed, not only through solemn judgment but also through the ordinary and universal teaching office (, n. 1792).

Now, among those things which the Church has always preached and will never cease to preach is contained also that infallible statement by which we are taught that there is no salvation outside the Church.-Letter of the Holy Office 1949

Here is the heretical second part:-

Therefore, no one will be saved who, knowing the Church to have been divinely established by Christ, nevertheless refuses to submit to the Church or withholds obedience from the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth.

Not only did the Savior command that all nations should enter the Church, but He also decreed the Church to be a means of salvation without which no one can enter the kingdom of eternal glory.

In His infinite mercy God has willed that the effects, necessary for one to be saved, of those helps to salvation which are directed toward man's final end, not by intrinsic necessity, but only by divine institution, can also be obtained in certain circumstances when those helps are used only in desire and longing. This we see clearly stated in the Sacred Council of Trent, both in reference to the sacrament of regeneration and in reference to the sacrament of penance (, nn. 797, 807).

The same in its own degree must be asserted of the Church, in as far as she is the general help to salvation. Therefore, that one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he be incorporated into the Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by desire and longing.

However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but when a person is involved in invincible ignorance God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God.-Letter of the Holy Office 1949

VATICAN COUNCIL II

I accept Vatican Council II.So I am not a sedevacantist or lay member of the SSPX.However I accept Vatican Council II with hypothetical cases only being hypothetical. So LG 16, LG 14 etc do not refer to physically known cases in the present times but are hypothetical for me. So there is nothing in Vatican Council II to contradict the old ecclesiology based on EENS having no exceptions.

In Vatican Council II for me there is no change in the Church's teachings on an ecumenism of return, no salvation outside the Church for non Catholics and non Christians and the non separation of Church and State since there is no salvation outside the Church .All political legislation must have Jesus as known in the Church as it's centre.Since there is no known salvation outside the Church.Every one in the State needs to get to Heaven since there are only Catholics in Heaven.

I interpret the Nicene Creed with no theological exceptions to ' I believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins'( and not three known baptisms).

I accept and interpret the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1995) without the new theology i.e there are no physically known cases of the baptism of desire and being saved in invincible ignorance.So CCC1257 ( The Neccessity of Baptism) for me, does not contradict the Principle of Non Contradiction

Can you beat this orthodoxy?!

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Do you ever read what you write?

The Council of Trent infallibly taught what you daily deny, thus you are ANATHEMA

Lionel:

I accept 'the desiretherof'as mentioned in the Council of Trent.It is a hypothetical case.The 'famous unknown catechumen saved' is hypothetical for me. I assume it is a hypothetical case for all human beings.Is this case of the catechumen, real for you ?. Someone you know ? Was he someone who was seen in Heaven saved without the baptism of water?

Of course not! So it can only accepted as a hypothetical case.This was the mistake made in the Letter(1949).Cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani, when he issued the Letter(1949) to the Archbishop of Boston relative to Fr. Leonard Feeney, during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, derailed Catholic theology.The effect was there among liberals AND traditionalists.Archbishop Lefebvre overlooked the heresy.The Letter re-interpreted 'the desire thereof' of the Council of Trent.It was done with a simple irrationality( physically visible BOD and I.I)

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Thursday 07-21-2016
ON JUSTIFICATION
FIRST DECREE
Celebrated on the thirteenth day of the month of January, 1547.

CHAPTER IV.

A description is introduced of the Justification of the impious, and of the Manner thereof under the law of grace.

By which words, a description of the Justification of the impious is indicated,-as being a translation, from that state wherein man is born a child of the first Adam, to the state of grace, and of the adoption of the sons of God, through the second Adam, Jesus Christ, our Saviour. And this translation, since the promulgation of the Gospel, cannot be effected, without the laver of regeneration, or the desire thereof, as it is written; unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

Lionel: Agreed. All need the laver of regeneration ( baptism of water) and we cannot know of any exception in the present times.Humanly it is not possible, past or present to know someone who was justified and saved or not saved with the baptism of desire or in invincible ignorance.

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CANON XXXIII.-If any one saith,that,by the Catholic doctrine touching Justification, by this holy Synod inset forth in this present decree, the glory of God, or the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ are in any way derogated from, and not rather that the truth of our faith, and the glory in fine of God and of Jesus Christ are rendered (more) illustrious; let him be anathema.

Lionel: I say that for salvation the baptism of water is always needed. Always. No exceptions.

If you say that there is justification and salvation without the baptism of water, I would respond,'How could you physically know of such an exception, irrespective if there was or was not an exception??' Since it would be a hypothetical case.

I am affirming the traditional teachings on Justification, Sanctifiying Grace and salvation.

In individual cases God may know of a Lutheran who is justified and saved.It would not be known to us.The graces given to him for salvation; the helps to salvation given to the Lutheran who is saved would not be known to me.

In general I know that for salvation the Lutheran need Sanctifying Grace, perfect charity and formal menbership in the Church for salvation (EENS, Vatican Council II (AG 7, LG 14? etc) This is the norm.

The Lutheran-Catholic joint declaration on the doctrine of Justification is theologically based on physically known exceptions to EENS.The Balamand Declaration is based on this error.

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Repent while you still have time, Lionel, and stop driving readers of Catholic Blogs crazy with your heresies. You know how many have banned you...get a clue

Lionel: It is the SSPX and the sedevacantists who are teaching irrationality and heresy with their new theology approved by Rome.

On Unam Sanctam Catholicam, Vox Cantoris, Rorate Caeili and other pro-SSPX blogs they assume that BOD is physically known and it must be accepted by all.

On the St. Benedict Center blog (Catholicism.org) they also assume that BOD is explicit and relevant to EENS( but followed with the baptism of water) and that LG 16 is objectively known and so Vatican Council II contradicts Feeneyite EENS.

Louie Verrecchio recently has informed Miami Una Voce that UR 3 interpreted by liberal ecumenists, contradicst the teachings on the one, true Church. So of course Vatican Council II has to be rejected by him.

Then here I come and say that I accept BOD and I.I but they are not physically known for me, they are not explicit. I accept implicit for us baptism of desire which is explicit only for God.

So for me BOD and I.I and LG 16, LG 14 do not contradict the traditional interpretation of EENS and the old ecclesiiology on ecumenism and other religions.It does not contradict the traditional teachings on religious liberty and non separation of Church and State.

They don't know from where I am coming from!

This is contrary to the 50 years programming on Vatican Council II and the about 70 years re-programming on EENS.

To reiterate: The issue is there are no physically visible cases of someone saved with the baptism of desire or blood or in invincible ignorance, without the baptism of water.There are no such cases in 2016 which we can see with the naked eye.Since it is not possible for human beings to physically see such cases, there are no such known cases in the past. There were none in 1949 when the Letter of the Holy Office was issued.We agree on this.

However while we both agree that there are no physically visible cases of the baptism of desire etc, since we cannot see the soul of a person, you are not willing to be quoted saying this.

No, Lionel, we still don't agree; I disagree with your following statements:

Lionel: The Church says BOD leads to salvation without the baptism of water(Letter of the Holy Office 1949 second part) and so the Church issaying there is salvation outside the Church

John: Because BOD joins one to the Church, which you have already conceded,

Lionel: BOD joins one to the Church is accepted as theoretical and hypothetical in a discussion. Remember I am still making the objective-subjective, explicit-distinction while you refuse to do so. You did not answer any of those questions in thesummary ( red).Thereal issue still is BOD is always invisible and so Vatican Council II does not contradict the strict interpretation of the dogma EENS.The the Letter of the Holy Office 1949 made a factual mistake.It suggested that there are exceptions to EENS. This has been accepted by the SSPX and the sedevantists.

Since BOD is invisible for me it is not an exception to EENS.

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means BOD is not an exception to EENS.

Lionel: Hypothetically one may argue that BOD is not an exception to EENS since there are no defacto BOD cases.No one knows of a catechumen who desired the baptism of water and died before receiving it and was saved. This is a straw man. There is no such case to argue about.

For me BOD is not an exception to EENS since it is not physically visible.That 'famous catechumen' does not exist in our reality.

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The person is still saved in and through the Church. Your conclusion that BOD is an "exception" to EENS just because it is not visible or experientially known is false. This is your key error.

Lionel: I repeat BOD is invisible for me so it is not an exception to EENS.There are no exceptions to EENS for me. I affirm the Feeneyite interpretation of EENS.For the Holy Office 1949 and the Archdiocese of Boston at that time, BOD was an exception to EENS:

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You go on to say:

The Church is saying every one does not need to be ' a card carrying member' of the Church.The Church says this even though neither you or I can personally know of this exception to the rule.

John: Yes! You have read the Church correctly. Yet, because you cannot see or have experiential knowledge of such a case, you incorrectly conclude that the Church erred. But the Church doesn't need to see a visible case (even though she did with St. Emerentiana) or have experiential knowledge of it to declare it to be true.

Lionel:You have agreed that there are no physical cases of the BOD.So there could be no one in the past who could have identified a BOD case.So how did 'the Church' see a visible case with St. Emerentiana?

Yes I have read the Church correctly in the Letter of the Holy Office 1949 I say the Church made a mistake.The Letter does not consider BOD as hypothetical only. Instead it infers it is physically visible. Then it concludes that it is a 'practical exception' to EENS.This was the reasoning also in Vatican Council II.

You reject Vatican Council II as a break with Tradition.You are really saying that Vatican Council II is a break with EENS and the Syllabus of Errors.You are not aware that with physical BOD and I.U, Vatican Council II becomes a break with EENS. Since BOD and I.I are referred to in LG 14 and LG 16. It becomes a break with the traditional teachings on ecumenism and no salvation for non Christians.Religious liberty was based on there being no known salvation outside the Church and so there was the need for all to save their souls and enter the Church. So there was no separation of Church and State and all political legislation needed to have Jesus as known in the Catholic Church,as its center.

You still are not aware that you can reverse all these errors by understanding BOD and I.I as only be hypothetical.It's another perspective. In this way you do not contradict EENS.The Church's ecclesiology stays the same.It is still pre-Council of Trent on other religions,Christian communities and religious liberty.The teaching on the Social Reign of Christ the King would have no theological exceptions, as at present.The Nicene Creed also would have no theological exceptions when we pray, 'I believe in one baptism...'

At this point you are at the center of the whole controversy over Vatican Council II.

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You then say:

Neither could any one in the past know of this case of someone saved with BOD or I.I without the baptism of water.We both agree that there are no physically visible cases of someone saved without the baptism of water and so no one could claim over history that they saw such a case, such an
exception.

John: No, I never agreed to this. The Church canonized St. Emerentiana who died as a catechumen. Using your same logic that we must be able to see something to know it is true, no one saw St. Emerentiana die with water baptism; moreover, the Church said she died as a catechumen. Therefore, we must conclude she died without the water but is in Heaven. Use your own logic here, Lionel, and couple it with the Church's declaration of canonization.

Lionel:This is your logic and not mine.Your logic says the Church over the centuries said de fide that there is no salvation outside the Church, ( I have quoted the Popes and Church Fathers on extra ecclesiam nulla salus and you did not have a problem with it in my last message to you). Now 'the Church' (contemporary) is saying that 'the Church'(pre Council of Trent) in the past is wrong.St. Emerentiana is an exception.She has died without the baptism of water in the Church.This was personally verifiable by someone.So there is an exception to the old rule on salvation.

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You conclude:

So for me the Church( 1949) has made a mistake since there are no physical cases of BOD or I.I and for you the Church has not made a mistake. There is known salvation outside the Church, all do not need to enter the church visibly (with faith and baptism) in 2016.

John: You assert your error once again, claiming that because cases are invisible and not subject to your experiential knowledge, they do not exist in reality, and hence the Church erred.

Lionel:BOD cases are also invisible for you.Experientially you do not know of any case in 2016.You cannot say that any BOD case exists in 2016. You can cannot say that there was a BOD case over the last 70 years or more.

You have agreed that no one in the past could have seen, known or met a BOD case saved with or without the baptism of water in Heaven.So are you not saying, at least privately that the Letter(1949) made a mistake in suggesting that BOD was an exception to Feeneyite EENS.

Are you not saying, at least to yourself, that Vatican Council II was never an exception to EENS, UR 3 was not never an exception to EENS, as Louie Verrecchio suggests on his blog.( Why is it so difficult to comment on Louie Verrechio's mistake? It was one of the points inred ( summary) in our previous e-mail exchanges).

You also assert your second error that BOD is an exception to EENS based on the false premise of the absolute necessity of visible, experiential knowledge. These are your two key errors.

Lionel:How can invisible cases for us be an exception to EENS?. So how can UR 3 be an exception to EENS and the rest of Tradition for Louie Verrechio.It is an exception for Verrechio and those who consider BOD and I.I as being physically visible.

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This brings us as close to the defects of your argumentation as possible. I hope you can see it now.

Lionel: You still have not answered the questions in the summary.

You are also refusing to say in public that there are no physically known cases of the BOD and I.l.You will not let me quote you.

Privately you say there are no physically known cases of BOD and I.I but then you indicate that St. Emerentiana was saved without the baptism of water and this was known to someone. This is contradictory.Either there are no physically known cases of BOD and I.I or there are such cases,you have to choose one position.

You also suggest that St. Emerentiana's case, something of the past, is an exception to EENS in 2016, otherwise you would not have mentioned her name. This is irrational. How can someone in the past be a physical exception to EENS in 2016.

You still refuse to say that LG 16 refers to invisible cases and so is not an exception or relevant to EENS.

Finally, this error is the modernism which was overlooked by Archbishop Lefebvre and it is still repeated today by Bishop Bernard Fellay and Bishop Richard Williamson and other bishops and priests of the SSPX.Is this the reason why you will not make the visible-invisible distinction?

Meet Gianna Jessen. She’s not a Catholic. She identifies as a Christian. She says she only wants Jesus.

Before I go on with this, let me say that I, too, hate reading news stories (or anything else on the Internet) peppered with Twitter tweets. I will try to be sparing in my selection of embedded tweets. But, as this concerns something that happened on Twitter, I will not avoid them outright.

Continuing with our subject, Gianna Jessen is a pro-life activist, a singer, and a lady who was born with cerebral palsy. Having overcome much in her lifetime, she is cognizant of her status as a challenge to the eugenic plank of the pro-abort platform that allows such “undesirables” to be dispatched with in-utero. And for all that, good for her!

What exactly led to it is unknown to me, but Gianna was recently bothered enough by Catholics telling her to convert that she put up a Twitter poll asking Catholics if she had to be a Catholic in order to be saved. Here it is:

As is so often the case in a democratic (or pseudo-democratic) exercise — e.g., the one before Pilate — the truth lost. I would have expected it to lose by a wider margin, so I was somewhat heartened — not that I put much stock in this poll.

Not surprisingly, she received some very substandard remarks, including from priests:

Brief reply, I know, but this is Twitter: 140 character limit. Besides, she wanted a straight answer, and had been given much else to think about.

We need to shoot straight with non-Catholics. But in order to do that, we have to get the Faith right ourselves. And indifferentist ecumenism has confused most Catholics today. The denial of extra ecclesiam nulla salus is not the only, but I say the most fundamental, reason the Church is in a mess today. In 1874, Orestes Brownson, the great convert and apologist, wrote this:

There can be no more fatal mistake than to soften, liberalize, or latitudinize this terrible dogma, ‘Out of the Church there is no salvation’ … If we wish to convert Protestants and infidels we must preach in all its rigor the naked dogma. Give them the smallest peg, or what appears so, not to you, but to them; — the smallest peg on which to hang a hope of salvation without being in or actually reconciled to the Church by the sacrament of penance, and all the arguments you can address to them to prove the necessity of being in the Church in order to be saved will have no more effect on them than rain on a duck’s back. [“Answer to Objections,”Brownson’s Quarterly Review (July 1874), pp. 413, 414; cited in Brother Thomas Mary’s “The Smallest Peg.”]

I would like to end with two other excerpts from Brownson, but first let me make a point about some of Gianna Jessen’s various remarks on Twitter. She said multiple times that she is not interested in any institution, but in “Jesus only” … “only Jesus.” Perhaps I am not the only one who noted the strange omission of the other two Divine Persons. It seems to me to be part of the reductionism inherent in the Protestant system, a reductionism that leads Protestants do divorce what God has joined together (faith and works, scripture and tradition, justification and merit, grace and sacraments, Divine will and human cooperation, etc.). Here, the Trinity Itself has been divided, at least implicitly.

I do not say that it is her conscious intention to throw two Persons of the Trinity out of her religion; I assume she is being merely rhetorical (or Twittorical, as the case may be). My point is this: When one takes “Jesus only,” and dispenses with those things that are joined to Jesus, either substantially (the Father and the Holy Ghost), or accidentally and by His Divine will (His Church, His Law, His Mother, His Sacraments, etc.), one ends up throwing out the Divine Babe with the bathwater.

And that’s bad.

Here is the first quote from Brownson I promised, from a piece entitled “Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus” inBrownson’s Quarterly Review for April, 1874):

With regard to the several Protestant sects in whose good faith we know them too well to believe, we do not judge individuals, for judgment has not been committed to us; and we dare not say when a Protestant dies that he is assuredly lost, for we know not what passed between God and his soul at the last moment when the breath left the body; but this we do dare say, that, if one dies a Protestant, and the presumption, if he remains an adhering Protestant up to the last moment, is that he does so die, he is most assuredly damned, that is, forever deprived of heaven and will never see God as He is. Protestantism is an open and avowed revolt against the church of God, a total rejection, in principle, of Christ and His authority, therefore of Christianity itself and Protestants exhibit in their lives no virtues of a supernatural order, or that strength. If, in infancy, they have been elevated above the natural order, they have fallen back to its level, and not seldom below it. If they can be saved in their heresy, or apostasy, the divine plan, as we have learned it, is false and delusive.

And here is the second, from part II of “The Great Question” in Brownson’s Quarterly Review for October, 1874; part I is here):

We speak not now in relation to other ages or countries. We are discussing the question in its relation to our own countrymen, the great practical question of salvation, as it comes up here and now. We have no concern with distant or merely speculative cases, or with scholastic distinctions and qualifications which have and can have no practical application here. The question is, What are we authorized and bound by our religion to proclaim to all those of our countrymen whom our words can reach? Here are the great mass out of the Church, unbelieving and heretical, careless and indifferent, and it is idle to expect to make any general impression upon them, unless we present the question of the Church as a question of life and death, unless we can succeed in convincing them, that, if they live and die where they are, they can never see God. This is the doctrine and the precise doctrine needed. Is it true? Yes or no? Is it denied? By those out of the Church, certainly, and hence the great reason why they are content to live and die out of the Church. Is it denied by those in the Church? What Catholic dare deny it? To what individual or class of individuals are we authorized by our holy faith to promise even the bare possibility of salvation, without being joined to the visible communion of the Church of God?